Telegraph.co.uk had its busiest month ever during November, gaining more than 1.6 million new users compared with October and recording a more than 100% year-on-year traffic growth.

The latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic, published today, show the Telegraph Media Group website recorded 12,800,627 unique users last month, overtaking its closest rival, Times Online, for the first time.

Telegraph.co.uk posted a 15.2% increase in unique users from October and 100.8% growth from November 2006, when the site had just 6,374,362 unique users. Page impressions rose by five million month on month to 109,278,179.

The Sun Online also saw impressive growth for November, with user numbers rising 25.3% month-on-month to 11,608,707, a 53.2% year-on-year increase from November last year.

Page impressions increased to 215,125,493, up from 194,752,621 in October.

Thesun.co.uk, which includes page3.com, sunbingo.co.uk and dreamteamfc.com in its network, also breaks out last month's automated page impressions at 17,357,953.

Mail Online also saw record traffic last month, reaching 14,415,724 unique users - up 6.54% from October. Page impressions rose by 7 million month on month to 115,184,974.

Both Times Online and Guardian Unlimited saw traffic fall from October, although the latter remains the most popular UK newspaper website network, according to ABCe.

Times Online's unique user figure fell by 1.3% from October to 12,283,080, although page impressions rose slightly to 92,393,765.

Guardian Unlimited, which had a record 18.4 million unique users in October, saw a month on month fall of 5.2% to 17,499,508 in November. Page impressions fell slightly to 160,365,482 last month.

Edward Roussel, the digital editor at Telegraph Media Group, credited part of the increase to its investment in multimedia and said the site had seen 3m video downloads during November.

"We're pleased with three things: the doubling of the rate of growth, which has also doubled our UK audience; video, which has done very well and is not reflected in the headline figures; and in the quality of traffic. We're ending the year on a high note," Roussell added.

He said the industry needed to look more carefully at more meaningful measurement tools to represent time spent on sites, the quality of users and repeat visitors.

"Whilst all major sites will be pleased with this year, the big issue is to come up with a set of metrics that demonstrate how we are improving the size of our audiences but also the quality of our relationships with the audience," he added. "If the audience is large that is one thing - but are they coming back?"

Roussel said it was realistic to expect that ABCe, which is run by a panel that includes representatives from advertising and publishing, would begin to release more data on news sites next year, such as so-called "rich media" including video and audio.

Telegraph.co.uk's biggest priority for 2008 will be video, he added, along with user-generated content.

"We also have to focus on certain verticals. It is incumbent on us to get good at those in areas like business and football where we are historically strong," Roussell said.

Just over 28% of users to Mail Online were based in the UK, compared with 36.2% for Telegraph.co.uk, 39.2% for Times Online and 39.4% for thesun.co.uk.

Guardian Unlimited's geographical breakdown is released quarterly, and last month UK users accounted for 39.2% of its overall audience.

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